On LinkedIn this month, a freelance writer and editor posted about approaching a writer who turned in a draft that appeared to be primarily AI-generated. In the comments, people had good advice:
Be curious and direct.
Compare the piece to the writer’s previous work.
Tell the writer their voice isn’t coming through.
Other people suggested running the draft through an AI detection tool like ZeroGPT, which the editor had in fact already done — and the results were “not encouraging.” The editor and commenters did point out that such tools aren’t always 100% accurate, so the results should be interpreted with caution. Still, the discussion sparked my curiosity (and a bit of anxiety, too).
I decided to test ZeroGPT with some of my own stories. (Full disclosure: I’ve never used AI in any of my writing.)
The experiment was disheartening.
ZeroGPT Test #1
First, I tried a paragraph from one of my 2025 reported articles, which explored why we might feel extra clumsy and what to do about it:
100% AI?! I wanted to throttle this stupid tool. “Hey, I wrote that, you idiot!” I yelled at my laptop while my dog snoozed nearby, wondering what all the fuss was about.
The tool remained silent, almost as if it was gloating. It did not care about my passionate arguments.
ZeroGPT Test #2
I tried again with another excerpt, this time from a personal essay about embracing my wavy hair:
Okay, ZeroGPT, you were correct this time, I thought, feeling slightly mollified.
ZeroGPT Test #3
Still, I decided to test one more example, using a piece I wrote about whether to let kids watch scary movies, where I included expert commentary and my own recommendations:
Again, ZeroGPT got it wrong, telling me that the text was mixed, but that the majority was AI-written.
I don’t know what to make of all this. As a writer, I’m troubled to realize an editor might run my work through an AI detection tool and think that I didn’t write 100% of the content. I would hope that by building good working relationships with editors and having a solid track record of quality content, writers can mitigate these concerns. But for now, I’ll be following the conversations closely around this issue — and I’ll continue to steer clear of AI tools in my writing.
Postscript: I shared these findings with my 14-year-old daughter, who has been writing a story based on her favorite young adult book series. For fun, we put an excerpt from one of her chapters into ZeroGPT.
The result? 20% AI-generated. She was stunned. “But I wrote that,” she said, instantly understanding my angst.
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